SO I HEARD YOU LIKE OPINIONS ON FALL 2014 (Podcast)

I’m back with another podcast with the usual suspects as well as a new face: Flawfinder, Caraniel, Landon, and Wendeego. Well, Deadlight was there too and he’s the one who compiled this, but he didn’t say anything the entire time.

This link will take you to both a playable file and a download in case you wanted to ruin your morning jog with some slightly outdated first-impressions on Chinese Cartoons (this was recorded on the 18th, meaning most shows were only on their second episode). I’m slightly disappointed that my small rant about KyoAni’s tendency to overdramatize the animation got cut compeltely, and my other rant about KimiUso’s first performance scene got shortened more than I’m comfortable with, but it probably wouldn’t have been very useful to hear anyways. Ask me if you ever wanted to hear more about either!

To be more specific, you know those moments where Makishima is talking to each of his subjects to get a better understanding of their headspace? Not only are they explaining their motivations to Makishima, they’re also telling us facts about the Sybil system and and cyberpunk universe with very cut-and-dry “did you know” statements. This really only happens during episodes 4-9, but it was a real pain sitting through characters sitting down and talking about how terrible the Sybil system is without actually showing us how it was so terrible.

Another thing I found to be annoying was that that same dialogue often comes off as absolute when it talks about society. I get the feeling that this is more for characterizing the person that says those things rather than an excuse to infodump more, but it happens so often in Gen Urobochi’s writing that I can’t help but wonder exactly how everyone can be so self-assured about literally everything there is to know about human behavior. That can be interpreted as being talked down on, and there’s a good amount of people who do not respect when stories do that. As one of those people who do not respect that aspect of Urobochi’s writing style, this is why I mention the worldbuilding as “spotty”. When it shows us how the world works, Psycho-Pass does very well in conveying that. When it tells us how the world works, it comes off as borderline pretentious.

Hmmm hadn’t thought of linking the show’s sometimes almost patronizing approach to storytelling with the actual world-building, but when I do your position makes perfect sense. Perhaps I need to reevaluate my conception of the term ‘world-building’.

Sorry man. The music thing wasn’t flowing well (plus I was dead tired from editing by that point) and until the most recent episode, KyoAni’s over dramatization wasn’t really important so I cut it out for time.